Some Will Have to Skip the Hops

He got so many requests -- nearly a quarter of the country's 1,400 craft breweries came running with hat in hand -- that he decided to hold a lottery. In the end, 108 breweries received anywhere from 88 to 528 pounds: all told, Koch estimates, it was enough to brew 10 million pints of beer.

The winners included some fairly sizable regional breweries, including Mendocino Brewing (maker of Red Tail Ale) and Abita Brewing Co. (best known for its Purple Haze and Turbodog brands), but also many tiny operations that were forced to scour the market for whatever was available.

Koch, who has long-term contracts with hop suppliers, says he may repeat the lottery next year if the hop shortage continues.

· Substitute.

Beer is more than 10,000 years old, but the first mention of hops in brewing was in a 12th-century pharmacopeia by Hildegard von Bingen, German mystic and theologian. Before the 1600s, brewers often flavored beer with a blend of spices called gruit or grut. B. United International, a Connecticut-based importer of specialty beverages, this month will introduce 13th Century Grut, a wheat-based ale seasoned with a blend of bay leaves, ginger, caraway, anise, rosemary and gentian. Look for it in 16.5-ounce bottles retailing for about $5.

This experimental beer was formulated by Fritz Briem, professor of brewing science at Doemens Academy in Munich. "We had a long discussion whether he should use any hops at all," recalls B. United's president, Matthias Neidhart. In the end, Briem decided to throw in a smattering of pollinated wild hops, more for their preservative properties than for their flavor.

Neidhart also noted that several ingredients commonly found in gruit (sweet gale, yarrow and henbane) had been rejected because they're now known to be poisonous or narcotic. (There are excellent reasons why hopped beer displaced gruit.)

But there is no shortage of safe hop substitutes, Neidhart says. His portfolio includes a number of Italian microbrews that draw their flavor from gentian roots, Chinese tea leaves and the peels of chinotto, a bitter citrus fruit.

If the hop crisis does no good otherwise, it might spur small brewers into an even greater frenzy of creativity.

Greg Kitsock's Beer column appears every other week. He can be reached at food@washpost.com.